Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday August 20, 2009 @08:45AM
from the it'll-happen-here-soon dept.

flynn writes "Ireland's oldest and largest ISP will be blocking access to The Pirate Bay from September 1st, while other ISPs have rejected the request to block TPB. From the Irish Times: 'Under an out-of-court agreement with EMI Records, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warners in January, Eircom agreed to cut off customers found to be repeatedly downloading music illegally. The deal also required Eircom to cut off access to Pirate Bay if requested. Yesterday, cable TV operator UPC, which has more than 120,000 broadband subscribers, announced it would not comply with a request to block access to Pirate Bay.'"

I've downloaded music via TPB's index. Repeatedly. ALL of it was music put on bittorrent by the artist/copyright holder themselves for free download -- i.e. not "illegal" at all. How do they determine whether or not bittorrent downloads are "illegal"? Or do they just blindly assume "protocol == illegal"?

I guess Ireland's oldest and largest ISP won't be a full-service ISP anymore.

Once ISPs start regulating what they will and will not transport over their cables, they open themselves up to all kinds of lawsuits. You're willing to block piratebay.com but you didn't prevent that creep from downloading child porn? You didn't prevent that hacker from breaking into his school's records? You didn't block all kinds of other activities that are illegal?

I hate the concept of "slippery slope" but this really is exactly that. Either ISPs will start blocking anything and everything they are told is "wrong" and become de facto thought police or they'll become vulnerable to all kinds of lawsuits for failing to block "this" content given that they're willing to block "that" content.

The smart thing for them to do is just be dumb pipes. Provide access to the internet and let the people decide how to use it. If they use it illegally, let the police sort it out. Unfortunately, the various lobby groups (MIAA, RIAA, and their ilk) are probably offering up sweet deals that are financially appealing. Now. Over time, however, it will all come back to bite them in the ass. By then, however, the people who made these decisions will be rich and have moved on to other endeavours and won't care that they've ruined these companies and destroyed the integrity of the internet...

(Of course, the big joke of all this is that the internet was designed to route around problems such as this. The entire point of it was to provide a communication tool that could perform even when major disruptions occur. Not to mention, as is proven every single day, there are more people trying to break through the controls than there are trying to create them. More > fewer, always. These restrictions will only ever amount to temporary solutions, at best. It's a game of cat and mouse that they simply cannot win, ever, regardless of how hard they try.)

Your idea is interesting, mostly because a lot less people would switch their ISP because you blocked their access to EMI, Sony, Universal or Warner, than would if you blocked their access to The Pirate Bay.

When 90% of the world only access the approved list (BBC, Google, iTunes etc), what the hell do they care? If it's only Linux distros you want, you're not the target market. Nobody cares what you, I, or Slashdot think.

Unfortunately, the various lobby groups (MIAA, RIAA, and their ilk) are probably offering up sweet deals that are financially appealing.

Actually I thought this was the most genius part!

RIAA/MPAA/friends offer ISP big $$$ to block the pirate bay.

ISP accepts that dirty money, and announces they will block them on Sept 1st.

The pirate bay sell off is scheduled for August 27th, 4 days before the block will be put in place.

The ISP seems to realize that the pirate bay will be worthless to everyone a couple days before they block access to it, which no one will care about since the pirate bays new owners will have basically already blocked access by taking the site as-is down.

The ISP just took the RIAA/MPAA bribe and is giving them nothing of any value in return.

Does Eircom have competitors that subscribers can switch to, or is it like the "free market" United States, where many of us only have one choice for broadband access?

There are some alternatives, Magnet and Smart Telecom are the main two, the others just resell Eircom BB. That is if your in one of the cities/large towns. Most of the country has to rely on 3G with shitty signal or dial-up/ISDN. The only real reason Eircom are the largest is because to get a phone line you have to get it installed by them then switch over to another provider, lazyness plays a large roll in why people go with eircom broadband.

If doesn't matter how many other people are pirating, the point is his legitimate use is blocked by the company he's paying money to allegedly deliver him Internet access.

And I guess the guy who goes to an illegal strip club because the barman mixes a mean Martini is also having his legitimate use blocked when the club is closed down because its main activity is illegal.

When 90% of the world only access the approved list (BBC, Google, iTunes etc), what the hell do they care?

Given that every poll I've seen has stated that over 50% have illegally downloaded music or video from the Internet (some putting the figure closer to 80%), I think you might be wrong there. If anything, Slashdot users, on average, are probably less likely to commit copyright infringement because a large percentage of us make a living from copyright-related activities.

The best thing about blind censorship is that if they just equate one site with illegal downloads then it gets pretty easy for people to just keep changing sites, client software, protocols, etc. Laws that only deal with the surface symptoms of a problem never really solve anything and they actually just distract people, allowing pirates pretty much free roam.

Actually, as the grandparent pointed out, this ISP is giving them something VERY valuable. This ISP is now permanently stripped of the "We can't block it for technical/legal/consumer reasons" defense. Now the RIAA and its ilk are free to flood them with demands to block other sites, and the ISP will have no choice but to do so.

I would say that it would be quite unusual. If you took all the torrents on the internet, and rated them by size * number of downloaders, I would have to guess that all the Linux distros in the world would probably account for less than 1% of traffic. Think about it. There may be 10 good linux distros. and they are all release at most twice a year. So you end up with 20 disto downloads a year. Now there are also at least 20 blockbuster movies per year. Are you trying to tell me that those 20 linux distro releases are going to get anywhere close to those 20 blockbuster movie releases?

When you buy music, make sure to check http://riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com] to see if the album is from a company that funds the RIAA. If they do, don't buy it and stick it to them a couple dollars of lost earnings at a time.

You are aware that you are not downloading anything (except for the.torrent-file) from The Pirate Bay, even when you're using it to find/get whatever it is you're trying to get? You are aware that you *might* be using a tracker hosted by The Pirate Bay, and also that you might *not* be using it? You are aware that you *might* be using a tracker hosted by The Pirate Bay if/when you find, and activate, a.torrent-file on a completely different site? You are aware that at no time, whatsoever, is any (I repeat *any*) data of the actual file you're downloading anywhere *near* The Pirate Bay? Ever?

Maybe you're *not* aware.

The first Swedish court quite obviously was *not* aware.

(Yes, I've read relevant parts of the proceedings and the initial judgment.)